ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Mike, your fine posts makes me wonder just what kind of strange corporate organization would periodically flush out its top executives and usher in a new batch who promptly torpedoed the projects of their predecessors!.

It sounds like the most insane possible way to run a network!

My God, is there some all-supreme head of all three organizations who delight in scrambling each studio's efforts to present good programing — and who gleefully prevent any good projects from achieve the success they deserve?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[tmlindsey]

It's the whole power trip thing for them; they have the power to axe a hit show, so they often do so they can green-light a new show hoping it will be even bigger & better! Then they can erase their predecessor's contributions and take the glory for themselves.

Executives in all industries are typically useless creatures.
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"

[Pow]

But meetings are always vital to any organization. They allowed me to take a power nap whenever I was in one.

[Pow]

ABC executives Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey called Stephen J. Cannell and told him that they would like to do a show with him. They wanted him to do a superhero show.

Cannell was never really been up for superhero shows. "There's something about superheroes I don't really get, they're perfect, they're invulnerable. That bugged me, because I always like the vulnerabilities of characters, not their strengths," was his view.

Being tasked with creating a superhero from whole cloth was a challenge the Writer/Producer only took on reluctantly. "I learned never say 'No' in the room --- never say no in the room because you could be walking away from gold," he laughed.

"I had done The Rockford Files and what made Rockford a fun show to create and do is I started out with the idea: What would happen if I were Rockford? "If somebody pulled a gun on me, they would get the keys to my car and my watch. I wouldn't be saying, 'Hey, put that away or I'm gonna feed it to ya!'

Brainstorming with writers Patrick Hasburgh and Juanita Barlett, Cannell's key people, Cannell used that same engine from Rockford Files and applied it to a superhero show. Cannell went on to say, "To me, it was important that my guy, Ralph Hinkley, was just a guy. It was important to me that the suit was always a problem, not a solution," "When he took the suit off, Hinkley was as vulnerable as you or me." "The suit then becomes the problem that all but destroys his life." The Greatest American Hero Companion book.
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Excellent choice Mr. Cannell. Had he decided to make Ralph Hinkley an ideal person who then receives the alien suit with powers only to make him him even more ideal, well that would have made for one dull and dreary character for the audience to embrace.

But by making Ralph funny and flawed before his close encounter as well as afterwards, now the audience is going to see themselves in his shoes.

Having an audience identify with a character is generally a sure fire way to draw them in and have them rooting for the lead. Cannell was dispensing with the near perfect characterizations seen in the DC superhero comics of the 1950s & 1960s, and following the paradigm created by Marvel comics with their new wave of superheroes in the 1960s. DC got the message and followed suit.

TGAH still remains so darned fun and entertaining because Cannell made Ralph relatable and likable.

[orzel-w]

[Pow]

The Suit

Creator Stephen J. Cannel originally saw Ralph's super suit as being yellow/beige with a brown cape. It would be changed to the far more dynamic red and black.

"I wanted the suit to be intentionally ridiculous," Cannell explained. Cannell's pilot script emphasizes that the suit has no chest emblem
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Fortunately the suit was altered from the awful sounding yellow/beige to the suit we saw on the series. And the addition of an emblem on the chest was another wise move by the production.

On The Greatest American Heroine pilot we see, without any explanation, that Ralph's suit is now a shiny spandex number instead of the cloth suit he wore throughout the run of the series earlier. This new suit would be the one that Holly Hathaway (Mary Ellen Stuart) would don on her pilot. I thought it looked good on both of 'em.

[Bud Brewster]

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Mike, I feel compelled to confess that I'm not fond of a series with a premise in which alien beings bestow a hi-tech "super powered suit" on a klutz who seems unworthy of it.

It's a bit like having the police fight crime by giving guns to law-abiding teenagers so thy can shoot criminals who roam the streets and threaten senior citizens.

In other words, good natured citizens who want to help are not necessarily qualified to battle evil. To put it bluntly, it takes a man from Krypton with a superior morality to handle such awesome powers.

Anyway . . . that's my feelings on the matter.

But I loved the title theme, and I bought the 45 rpm record when it was all over the FM stations, back when the show was popular . . . not to mention that incredibly sexy show called Solid Gold!

Listening to this full-length (lip-synced) version has reminded me why I bought the record!

_____________ THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I understand your thinking on TGAH, Bud.

However, I feel differently. Had creator Stephen J. Cannell taken the easy road for his series and made Ralph Hinkley a perfect individual in his life prior to receiving the super suit and then having him bestowed with super powers, it would have made for a very boring character in my eyes. Marvel comics presented us with Tony Stark aka Iron Man. Tony's backstory is that he is a scientific genius/inventor, uber-wealthy, movie star handsome and has women swooning over him. Now he creates his astonishing high tech suit of armor with gadgets and gizmos galore. Yawn, the guy who was a superstar to begin with is now a famous superhero. Dullsville. Like watching someone who is very wealthy win a huge lottery.

Back in the past, DC comic book heroes were all men and women of sterling character with no flaws. I give Cannell much credit at not desiring to follow such an established superhero model. He wanted to explore what happens when the common man is thrust into an out of this world scenario? How does he respond to it all? How does it benefit his life while also complicating it and hurting it in some cases? Cannell was bringing the audience along for the ride by placing an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. He was asking himself and his audience just how would we respond if we were in the same boat as Ralph? Add to that the elements of humor that can derive from the premise and you have the makings of an entertaining show with some depth to it.

TGAH was a refreshing and welcome change of pace to me on the superhero genre that hadn't really grown in decades. One hero could be easily interchanged with another because they did stridently follow a formula that was unchanged. Cannell did something original with a dusty old concept that breathed new life into it. That's my take on the series.